gracie’s blog

another (ultimately) boring, working weekend. had barely 3 hours of sleep and had to stay in the office and watch the VNC server screen on the never ending quarterly upgrades of certain application instances. yada yada yada. i’m so bored and spaced out that i can barely write in my blog.

so whats up? other than drowning myself with the constant caffeine laden coffee, i kill time by working on improving this second hand IBM X30 laptop i bought as my home pc (oh yes, i’m an el-cheapo sucker). i understand that this unit did not come with inbuilt wifi but i thought that if i buy the wifi pci cards that are in abundance in china, i can make it work. i bought two but returned them to the store since i was unable to make it work. i downloaded the troubleshooting manual from demonoid.com and guess what? after thorough reading (and looking at the teenee-weenee diagrams), i have come to the conclusion that my laptop needs the another part - the wireless antenna that is lodged somewhere at the left and right side of the screen. okay, i thought about checking it for a couple of days and decided on not making a guinea pig out of my laptop. but curiosity got the best of me. one day, i laid out my scalpels (ok, its not scalpels but lots of different screws) and opened up the unit. i got lost in the number of screws i lifted off the unit, made mental notes of where the darn screw fits. at the end, i realize (and see) that the x30 i have does not have the required wireless antenna. the kicker is, at what expense? i broke the front casing off (its as brittle as ice), screwed one screw in the front, and still no wifi. i just settled then, for a classic pcmcia wifi thingy… now the hunt is on, for replacing the cracked casing (and cough up more darn dough).

on the other hand, i still have to figure out how to make windows mobile 6 work on my htc tytn unit. okay, okay, WM6 for HTC TyTn is still not officially released but there are ROMS out there floating around just waiting for someone to flash it in their units and test it. i was unable to resist the urge *grin*. and besides, the original OS that came with my unit is in chinese, so i really had to change ROMS so i can test the unit (warranty time ticking off). better i test it now than later. the only thing that bums me out in this unit/ROM combo (LSVW WM6 3.2 release) is that wifi is unstable, and so is the bluetooth stack. i’m going crazy pairing off my headset (to think its just a mono headset), other PPCs to share files with, and my laptop. and the wifi’s going bonkers, connecting now and disconnecting the next minute.  HTC Universal’s unofficial WM6 ROMs are much more stable. good (non intermittent) wifi connections, and stable BT stack. oh well, that’s the tradeoff you get for being an early adapter.

the sun has been shining brightly this side of china. and God its humid. much like the weather my tropical Philippines. back to the mines again for me.

i have just (as of this moment) finished watching the full 7 seasons of buffy the vampire slayer. it still remains to be one of my favorite tv series (along with alias, charmed and prison break). i felt so bad seeing it end again and again ( i think i watched the 7 full seasons twice). overall, its a good series, touching life’s aspects such as death, darkness, trust, friendship, addiction and sexual orientation. they did a good job of integrating dawn as buffy’s sister, willow as a lesbian, and anya/spike going from the bad guys to the good ones. it also touches on two subjects that reaches out to me the most: love and death. i lost my mother to cancer, and the episode wherein buffy loses her mother to death kinda strung a familiar chord in me and left me to tears. i remember the pain of losing all to well. i thought that in time, it will all be better. but being alone here and missing my family, the pain feels all to recent.

well, watching marathon dvds is my particular past-time here in china. mainly because the only english channel shown here changes content only after a week or two, and that the movies shown here are either translated or too old.

i have watched alias, charmed, prison break, smallville, and buffy tv series here in the past year not to mention the countless movie dvds i watched to pass time. with smallville i felt irritated why they kept the feelings between clark and lana so complicated when it was actually simple. when you love the person as much as clark loved lana, clark would be able to share his secret. everybody has their own deepest darkest secret and if they feel as much as clark does, it makes sense to share it. its like the baptism of fire. instead of sharing, they mope on and on about clark not being able to share his secret. eventually, because of clark’s distrust, lana ended up being with lex. what a bummer!

the only tv series i truly liked is charmed, alias, buffy and prison break. prison break is gripping, and will make you hang at the edge of your seat. its not boring like the others. as with charmed, alias and buffy, they ended the season even though fans don’t want it. but do they listen? i bet not.

hay! i better end up watching the elections going on in the Philippines…

i was so happy when my PM (project manager) told me that I can participate in China’s Labor week holiday. i kept on fussing with my friends that i’d be on holiday, for the first time in over a year. i mean, i never follow Chinese holidays. my client’s calendar is my calendar. so i was particularly happy about this. but my happiness was cut short when i realized that my PM also changed my schedule. my time off coincides with the holiday! and here i am, on a sunday working. woke up so darn early only to find out that the guys i’m talking to in india were late. bummer. its good that i live alone. i don’t get jealous if i get a text message from my friends knowing that they’re out having such fun when i am alone working in my cube.

well, i guess this is “the” tradeoff for having a bit higher salary than my friends. you get to keep your money because you can’t spend it. pretty much difficult going out here in China if you don’t go out with locals.

anyways, back to the mines for me…